Thursday, September 8, 2011

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AMNESIA ÜBERALLES: Thank God for the Kim Kardashian controversy now engulfing Montecito, as well as the persistent questions about what Sheriff Bill Brown knew and when did he know it? Otherwise, I might feel compelled to focus on the 10th anniversary of 9/11 and the tsunami of collective necrophilia masquerading as patriotism — as if the tragic loss of 3,000 lives in that attack somehow ennobles the rest of us — about to overwhelm every square centimeter of the nation’s psychic space. In the days to come, we will be exhorted to “Never Forget!” But after the furious mind-scrub that took place in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, I’m not sure what’s left to remember. Personally, I’m much happier contemplating the political fallout from Kardashian’s matrimonial blitzkrieg. The good people of Montecito are looking to roll a few heads because it appears Kardashian’s krew did not apply for all the necessary county permits before hijacking a stretch of Sycamore Canyon Road and dispatching two noisy helicopters over the $29-million Montecito estate where the $20-million wedding took place three weeks ago, August 20. They are especially incensed that Sheriff Brown — who had the gall to attend the event dressed in a tuxedo — never saw fit to notify other county permitting agencies of the true size and scale of the production in a timely manner even though he knew well in advance. Others have objected more practically that if Montecito was to be screwed, it should at least have gotten kissed. By that, they mean local government agencies should have gotten a much bigger payoff than a few hundred bucks for a media extravaganza that could ultimately generate $100 million in revenues. Others in the tourist trade are willing to content themselves with the priceless free advertising Montecito and Santa Barbara have garnered from all the secondhand smoke swirling about Kardashian’s nebulous fame. Kardashian is famously famous just for being famous. She doesn’t sing, dance, act, tell jokes, cure cancer, or save starving children. But her ass, I am assured, is one of the marvels of the modern world, epic in dimension and wondrous to behold. To those who regard the mere possession of a beauteous maximus — the attainment of callipygian perfection — a slim reed upon which to fix the global gaze, there is ample historic precedent. Helen of Troy may have had a face that launched a thousand ships, but it was her ass, I have it on impeccable authority, that men followed into battle. That, at least, was something. In stark contrast, former president George W. Bush did not have a great ass or even a good ass. Instead, he just was one. For citizens of the United States, that proved more than sufficient to follow him into futile battle and bankrupting what had then been the world’s reigning superpower.

Angry Poodle

By now, you all know the math. Three thousand were killed on 9/11; 6,000 American troops have been killed in action in Iraq and Afghanistan. But actually, the numbers are a little more complicated. When you toss in the private contractors, the American death toll is closer to 8,351, and according to a Brown University report, when you consider all of the United States’ allies, the number is more like 28,000 killed in battle. These numbers, compared to previous wars, seem extraordinarily low. That’s because we’ve learned better how to care for our wounded. According to the Pentagon, 90,000 Americans were medically evacuated from the war zone, 50,000 of whom were actually wounded in action. But 500,000 of the 1.25 million dispatched to Iraq or Afghanistan have filed medical claims for injuries sustained while on duty. As of 2010, the Veterans Administration reported 192,114 diagnoses of post-traumatic stress disorder and 195,547 traumatic brain injuries. That’s a lot of scrambled eggs. In terms of killing the “bad guys,” the numbers are all over the map. The English medical journal the Lancet estimated the Iraqi death toll at one million. Brown University puts the combined casualty count for Iraqi and Afghan civilians at 137,000. Who really knows?

In terms of dollars and cents, the United States has spent $1.3 trillion to date waging war in these two counties. According to the Brown University study, that number will mushroom to $3.2 trillion — and possibly as high as $4 trillion — when the lifetime cost of treating our veterans is factored in. The genius of Bush is that he waged war off the books; none of his budgets accounted for these expenditures. Barack Obama changed that policy, and now look at the mess we’re in. No wonder the Chinese are currently rebuilding the San Francisco Bay Bridge and poised to buy the Los Angeles Dodgers.

It is worth remembering how on August 6, 2001, George W. Bush shrugged off warnings by his intelligence agencies that bin Laden was preparing an imminent strike within the United States, possibly using hijacked airplanes as weapons. After ignoring information then readily at his disposal, Bush would argue he needed extra-constitutional authority to wiretap our own citizens to keep them safe from further attack. Later, when his own intelligence agencies failed to provide any evidence linking bin Laden with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, Bush and his advisors created a whole new “intelligence” bureaucracy that would tell them what they wanted to hear. Out of this, they conjured a number of threats they knew at the time to be false: that Saddam Hussein was aggressively seeking the capacity to make nuclear weapons, that Saddam Hussein was somehow responsible for 9/11, that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. Congress, even the Democrats, allowed themselves to be stampeded by the Bush White House and, in an act of craven calculation that makes even cynics blush, gave Bush the blank check he needed to wage the wrong war against the wrong enemy at the wrong time. Congressmember Lois Capps, to her everlasting credit, voted no.

Never forget? Why remember? In the meantime, we need to get to the bottom of this Kardashian wedding scandal.

Comments

Great linkage to all the malfeasance by the Bush administration. And if anyone doesn't think that 9/11 could not have been orchestrated internally by at least allowing 9/11 to occur; check out the one small segment in our lurid recent history 'The Pat Tillman Story.'

And it continues in another great orchestration as I witnessed on the LCD last night in the republican 'debate.' Located at the homage of another great orchestrator The Ronald Reagan Presidential Cathedral, lesser manipulators of the truth are still trying to win your vote. I don't think it is amnesia. There is just no conscience, truth or shame in this republican party.

Except for the gratuitous insults to Bush (most of the free world leaders were in agreement with the WMD assessment, except for France, who preferred to continue trading with saddam), this was a good column. Beautous maximus - very clever.

The free world leaders were in agreement after being pushed and prodded because Bush was taking us into war no matter what. After all, they had a great example from Britain and their great leader; Tony Blair.

As I recall, countries other than the US had their own intelligence indicating the presence of WMD. In any case, being wrong and lying are entirely different. The BDS folks seem convinced that Bush lied, i.e. that it is quite impossible that he simply had incorrect data and decided based on that data. Of course, the BDS folks were all closely in the loop and had info that the rest of us did not have. There is a big difference between provable fact and religious conviction.

Nick Welsh writes in this column that, "Helen of Troy may have had a face that launched a thousand ships, but it was her ass, I have it on impeccable authority, that men followed into battle. That, at least, was something. In stark contrast, former president George W. Bush did not have a great ass or even a good ass."

It is surprising to see this in the local Independent, and didn't think this kind of content was allowed to be published.

Hate language, by the way, 'attaches people's physiological attributes or geneological backround in order to criticize, check, or reduce a person.'

I have even greater impeccable authority, frankly, that it was Agamemnon's ass that led all them busty men into battle under the Trojan War, but it's Greek to me.

We'll see how long this post makes it online before it gets deleted for offensively vulgar or obscene language, then.

W. Bush and his administration will be remembered as the fools who destroyed the U.S. Fed. Gov. and the U.S. economy.

Clinton helped by deregulating Wall street and reversing F.D.R.'s banking regulations, but W. Bush and his ship of fools cut taxes and gave away the U.S. Treasury like drunken sailors, leaving Americans with more debt than we can manage.

People who think we're gonna recover economically after we exported away millions of jobs to Asia and refuse to tariff China's imports, are dreaming. No matter who gets elected, the damage already done is permanent and irreverseable.

"And if anyone doesn't think that 9/11 could not have been orchestrated internally by at least allowing 9/11 to occur; check out the one small segment in our lurid recent history 'The Pat Tillman Story.'"-- Don McDermott

There's two level of idiocy here. One is that Bush orchestrated 9/11. The second is that Tillman's death is somehow related. Please tell me, Don McDermott, that you are not an idiotic "truther".

When I "remember 9/11" I don't remember the 3000 people that died that day or the thousands that died in war afterwards. I remember how our government has let the terrorists win. The sick group of people that orchestrated 9/11 accomplished a lot more than they intended. That group of people has affected the lives of every American. Millions of Americans everyday day shake their heads and mutter "9/11..." while following some pointless procedure or law. Not a single post 9/11 law or policy has saved any American lives.

Yet everyday while our liberties are taken away we sheepishly bow our heads to those 19 men and thier 1,368 virgins, muttering: "you win..."

Georgy; Agreed. But Clinton has acknowledged and apologized. With republicans there is zero contrition. And at least Clinton had competent staff who cared and did their job competently overseeing the markets, preventing a similar financial catastrophe. See both short Sept 1998 segments here http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontli...

SezMe: I have a lot of obsessions. Council member Dale Francisco is the one obsession that needs to do some explaining, whilst condescendingly waltzing around old Santa Barbara, high and mighty and all. But mostly I'm obsessed with good, honest and fair representation.

SezMe: I am perfectly wiling to believe that Bushs' involvement was simply incompetence, a stooge. Others in Bushs' administration I'm not so sure about. Please see the members, objectives and mission statement for the Project for a New American Century.

All y'all:A bit of perspective might be in order.On September 11, 2001 the New York Mets were scheduled to play the Pittsburgh Pirates, in Shea Stadium, capacity 57,333, having beaten the Chicago Cubs 5-4 the night before. The 3,000 +/- lost that day at the World Trade Center would not even have filled the box seats along the baselines.Otherwise, relatively recent disagreements among the various sects of us homo sapiens have resulted in death numbers many orders of magnitudes greater than the paltry 3,000 +/-. Consider Sudan: modest estimates start at 500,000 dead, 2 and a half orders of magnitude greater, i.e. 500 versus 3 thousand. And the slaughter in Sudan continues to gallop.Or, consider Don Cheadle's cinematic portrayal of the Hutu/Tutsi flap in Rawanda: again, moderate estimates put the number of dead at 800,000, i.e. 800 versus 3, thousand.A few years back Uncle Pol Pot saw to the murder of 2,500,000 of his countrymen: 2,500 versus 3.The National-Socialist leader in the 30's and 40's probably accounted for less the 10,000,000 murders: 10,000 versus 3.By most accounts, Papa Joe probably doubled his effort at 20,000,000 murders: 20,000 to 3.Thus, we need to pause on this tenth anniversary, and perhaps celebrate the fact that the combined forces of the western world seem to be working in the right direction, sort of. While Adolph tried to set the bar high, Uncle Joe trumped him soon after. But then, lately it seems that the best our species can do is 10 million or so - if this were the Dow or Nasdaq there would be serious cause for concern - I heard that the Dow closed below 11k today!But on the genocide/murder scale it seems that the trend is down, if only mildly and perhaps, temporarily.In any event it is absolutely beyond me why the paltry 3,000 +/- should be should be such a big deal in the good ole USof A. Bunch of Whiners, that's what I think.Michael Ganschow

Mr. Ganschow, you miss a huge point in attempting a straightforward equivalence: it's not the amount of innocent people who died on 9/11, it's the way they died, as a direct attack on the US, perhaps the largest in history.

For mr. "jfklbj," you pedal an old right-wing talking point, long put to rest.

Friday, August 21, 1998http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/..."Today, we have struck back," Clinton said in a surprise announcement at the Massachusetts island resort of Martha's Vineyard, where he cut short his vacation and returned to Washington for a late afternoon conference with his national security team in the White House situation room.

"Clinton described the training complex in Khost, Afghanistan -- 94 miles southeast of Kabul and just inside the border with Pakistan -- as "one of the most active terrorist bases in the world." He said it was "operated by groups affiliated with Osama bin Laden," a Saudi expatriate whose public declarations and shadowy history have placed him at the center of suspicion since the Aug. 7 destruction of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

"Yesterday's use of military force was distinguished not only by its scale, among the largest of the Clinton presidency, but by the nature of its target: a stateless confederation of terrorist groups, without strict hierarchy, government or territory. A high-ranking intelligence official said of bin Laden: "He's a transnational actor in and of himself."

"Senior administration officials involved in planning yesterday's attacks said they signaled the start of what one called "a real war against terrorism," emphasizing that "this is not a one-shot deal here." A high-ranking intelligence official said "the prospect of retaliation against Americans is very, very high." "

"Nine days ago, President Clinton flew overnight from a political trip in California for a White House meeting at which his national security team laid out planning for a military attack against a terrorist network linked to Osama bin Laden.[snip]

"... All the while, he and a few national security officials knew the truth: Clinton planned to return to Washington so he could speak again to the nation, this time about the U.S. military action he had ordered to avenge the Aug. 7 bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

"And so it went for nearly two weeks, several close presidential advisers said yesterday, as Clinton's schedule and thoughts hurtled back and forth between two crises of a very different nature. Even as Clinton was preparing to acknowledge a difficult truth about one secret in his private life, he was harboring another secret dealing with the most difficult responsibility of any president's public life -- when to use military force against an enemy."

"In August 1998, President Clinton ordered missile strikes against targets in Afghanistan in an effort to hit Osama bin Laden, who had been linked to the embassy bombings in Africa (and was later connected to the attack on the USS Cole). The missiles reportedly missed bin Laden by a few hours, and Clinton was widely criticized by many who claimed he had ordered the strikes primarily to draw attention away from the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

"In August 1998, when [Clinton] ordered missile strikes in an effort to kill Osama bin Laden, there was widespread speculation - from such people as Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) - that he was acting precipitously to draw attention away from the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal, then at full boil. Some said he was mistaken for personalizing the terrorism struggle so much around bin Laden. And when he ordered the closing of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House after domestic terrorism in Oklahoma City, some Republicans accused him of hysteria."http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/...

Add up the numbers of people killed by drunk drivers over the last ten years and it far exceeds those killed in the 9/11 attacks yet our culture celebrates the booze culture.

I'm far more worried about being taken out by some drunk coming out of a bar or a wine tasting room than I am by Mr. Jihadist and even then I don't spend all my time worrying about that either.

When I was a kid I was told the Russians would nuke us and by the time I was in Junior High I realized there was about 1000 different ways I could die so I might as well enjoy whatever time I had left.

Reflects and expands on a lot of what I've been reading about income inequality studies by Emmanuel Saez, etc.

If most Americans (and I dare say most regular Indy commentors who aren't members of a private bank) could understand what's in that article, they'd realize we all have a lot more in common than our petty differences and we'd all vote a lot more the same.

I'd go so far as to say America's Plutonomy is the 900-pound Gorilla in the room that we're dancing around while fighting for leftover scraps.

Again, this article is just too stupid to comment on. Just more pap from a disrespectful America-hating lefty. My last comment was removed by the staff for saying the same thing I'm saying now. Sorry, if I called this guy's article stupid. But, that's just my opinion, and I wonder about a "use policy" wherein that is a "violation".

Bill - The only problem is that drunk drivers aren't foreign combatants that came onto our soil, and killed almost 3,000 people in the span of just around an hour. The point is not the number that were killed. The point is by whom, where, and for what reason they were killed. There are many radical muslim fundamentalists out there who would kill a lefty American just as soon as kill a righty American. They hate us for being us! And, there is nothing we can do, aside from dying, that will make them stop hating us. So, unlike the apologetic lefties for which these guys have equal hatred, and would kill at the drop of a hat, I remain steadfastly un-apologetic for living a life that bugs these idiots so very much.

If I seem to obsess on the drunk driving issue, it's because my dad was hit by one, two cousins were maimed in separate incidents by drunk drivers, and a third cousin had his wife killed by a drunk driver so when I see people laughing and getting drunk at their "wine tasting" shindigs I feel a certain duty to remind them that their seemingly harmless activity affects others. (The guy that hit my dad had a 0.069 blood alcohol content thus disproving the myth that being only slightly buzzed is ok)

Whether it's gangbangers killing people, foreign terrorists attacking us, or our own behavior killing us, all should be given equal treatment and booze industry has seduced our culture into the myth of "responsible drinking" so I just wanted to add this dimension.

My dad luckily survived, (many things fell into place that night) and that was my wake up call. I think of all the others who are not so lucky.

Even the CHP and the Office of Traffic Safety pointed out in public service ads on KEYT that during the average tasting tour a person visits four wine rooms in a two hour period and has consumed the equivalent of a bottle of wine yet our media and culture turns a blind eye to this as these people get behind the wheel.

I find it interesting that the same culture which (justifiably) points out the dangers of second hand smoke is almost mute on the second hand dangers of alcohol. (Drunk drivers)